From Catholic Church to useless research: Sir John Hegarty on where marketing is working and failing
The advertising legend on the possibilities of AI, the failings of market research and why he’ll be telling a few “home truths” at Festival of Marketing.
· Marketing WeekBy Josh Stephenson 30 Sep 2026 6:51 am
The advertising legend on the possibilities of AI, the failings of market research and why he’ll be telling a few “home truths” at Festival of Marketing.
Sir John Hegarty is a man with a lot of things to say about the state of the marketing industry.
We published an interview with the advertising legend last week where he railed against the ‘repetitive, cliché and boring’ work he sees in the modern age. The industry, he believes, is desperately struggling with a failure of creativity.
But it’s not all bad. Hegarty sees inspiration in the advent of AI and believes in influencers that marketers have a channel worthy of their time (if they do it right). However, there’s the changing agency relationship and the overreliance on market research, that has his head in his hands all over again.
Ahead of his appearance at Marketing Week’s Festival of Marketing on Wednesday, 14 October, we’ve rounded up a quickfire blast of the topics that have captured his attention – and his ire – ahead of the big day.
Sir John Hegarty on influencers…
“The whole development of influencers is really interesting. It’s another means of communication, but you shouldn’t hand over responsibility of what you stand for to somebody who is going to interpret it as they want. If I was a brand, I’d be working with them. But you’ve got to have a core belief in who you are, what you are, and what you stand for that people buy into, and then they can go and become the apostles.
“It’s like the Catholic Church, isn’t it? You’ve got to believe in what it’s about. Greatest brand in the world, by the way. Every lesson you need to know about marketing, the Catholic Church did it first. Best logo in the world. Seven day opening hours. Went global straight away. All of it. But the point about it was, it had apostles, and they went out and they talked about the church and they spread the word.
“Content creators are out there spreading the word but you have to make sure [they are spreading the right word]. Not enough brands have a set of beliefs they can abide by and communicate with. So, therefore, they just make their own stuff up, and sometimes it’s very good, sometimes it’s not.”
Always-on marketing…
“Digital landfill is what I call it. We’re creating this stuff but where does it all go? Is there some digital place where all these things exist that have been discarded? You don’t have to be on all the time. Why don’t you go on when you’ve got something interesting to say?
Who told you that [you must be always-on]? Ah, the technology companies. The social media companies have told you that because it’s good for them, not necessarily good for you. Just do stuff that’s meaningful. That might be once a month or twice a month, whatever it is. But make it meaningful.”
AI…
“I do believe AI is going to be quite momentous, I really do. I’ve been around a long time and the number of times I’ve heard this is going to change everything is numerous. But I do think AI is going to be quite remarkable.
“One, it’s going to level the playing field, it’s going to benefit smaller, faster, more nimble organisations.
“The other thing I say about it is to think about it as a collaboration. You collaborate with it. It’s not a tool and I think people make the mistake of thinking of it as a tool. Collaborate to get to a certain point and then you’ve got to take it on, because it’s your imagination that will take it to the next level. It’s going to be a great aid to the creative process.
Stop chasing AI, start asking better questions“But the problem is, again, it’s the left brain thinkers who look at it as a way of saving money. They immediately go, ‘Oh, I don’t have to employ all these people.’ Rather than what can it do for me? How can I grow with this? How can I make this more interesting?
“I do think the issue of copyright has to be resolved. You’ve taken all this work and you’re now reselling it. But we can resolve these things. My advice to everybody is: work with it, use it, become familiar with it. Because, like anything in life, the more you do so, the more you are going to be able to make it work for you.”
AI-generated creative…
“There’ll be people out there doing it because you’ve got idiots who do all kinds of things to prove anything. But again, you’ve got to remember, it’s called artificial intelligence.
“What you’re surely trying to create is something real, something that connects with people, has empathy. I mean, it’s actually telling you, you fucking dumbwit, it’s artificial, and you want to go on doing it. So, best of luck, there’ll be idiots out there who think it’s the answer and who will get lost in the noise. And then there’ll be those who are really clever who see how it can help them. I can work with it, yes, but I’m the creative director. I’m the one driving it forward.”
Market research…
“As I get older, I become more convinced that research hasn’t done anything for the world of marketing. You look at all the founders I’ve interviewed. There’s no research. It’s just a belief in what it is they can do. And I increasingly go, well, what’s the value of it? All it does is it makes everything the same and it allows people to make very poor, average decisions. I want exceptional decisions, not average. We always used to say, ‘Good is the enemy of great’, and research gets you to good, but good isn’t good enough.
“What I’m saying is sacrilege in terms of the world of marketing. I used to be in meetings, even at BBH, and we’d be talking to a prospective client, and I’d hear someone from our side go, ‘We have consumer understanding.’ And I’d see red here. ‘You’ve got customer understanding? Wow! I don’t understand myself sometimes. How do you have that? Are you God?’ I used to say in the meetings, no, we don’t have consumer understanding, we have consumer knowledge, and that’s quite different.
“We have knowledge that people are spending more time at home, they’re drinking more beer, they’re drinking less wine, they’re buying smaller cars. That’s knowledge. Now, what do you do with that knowledge?”
On the changing agency relationship…
“It’s a great shame. People always say to me, ‘What do you think about companies that have internal agencies?’. And I go, well, if you want to do that, please go ahead and do it. But one of the great values of an outside agency is that it is an outsider. It can comment and observe. Look at the great artists and great thinkers – so many of them were outsiders.”
“By diminishing that, and again this is left brain thinking that goes, well, this is an efficiency, I’ll bring it inside, control it, I won’t pay all those fees. It sounds great. But they lose the ability to have a really challenging relationship that might make them rethink and do something a little bit more profound that adds real value to the bottom line.
“That’s what the great creative agencies did. They were staffed by renegades, mad people, crazy people, but they had a power to make you think again. Whereas if you take them inside or you make them part of a corporation, they lose that ability.”
Eternal optimism…
“I always say to people, I’m an optimist. I’m cursed as an optimist, and I think creative people are optimists, even though they might look miserable, because they have to believe that the next idea they have is going to change everything. Pessimism is the death of creativity.
“So, I remain an optimist. I’ve seen what a great idea can do. I’ve witnessed it. I’ve been there. I’ve been part of it. I’ve helped create it. And there’s nothing like when you’ve seen what something can do to understand the value of it and understand how to keep that feeling alive.
‘Stop staying in your lane’: What marketers need to quit for good“It’s a bit like love. Unless you’ve fallen in love, you will never actually understand what love really is. And if you’ve seen a great idea, been part of a great idea, the transformation is just huge.
“I’m not really in advertising anymore. I’m now trying to teach the broader world about the value of creativity. But, obviously, a lot of it is to do with communication, because that’s supposedly who should be engaging with it and using it. Archbishop Desmond Tutu had a lovely line. He said, ‘I’m a prisoner of optimism’, which I always thought was very poetic.”
On headlining Festival of Marketing…
“I’m going to tell a few home truths. I’m not going there to be nice and wonderful. I don’t give a shit. But I am going to say that creativity is the future and that’s because it is about imagination. The core of innovation is creativity. Now, what brand, what company, doesn’t want to innovate? Creativity is the answer. Celebrate it, understand it, worship it, appreciate it. Kick fucking data out because everybody’s got the same data. Everybody hasn’t got the same idea as you.”
Sir John Hegarty will be appearing at Marketing Week’s Festival of Marketing on Wednesday, 14 October as a keynote speaker. To book tickets, visit the website.